


I Battle My Jerk Step-Dad

by Andromath



Series: Marvel ficlets [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Pepper Potts, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Iron Lad Peter Parker, Irondad, Kidnapping Attempt, Parent Pepper Potts, Parent Tony Stark, Parenthood, Pepper Potts as Rescue, Peter Parker is Pepper Pott's Biological child, Peter is a Little Shit, Post-Iron Man 3, Prank Wars, Rescue, Step-parents, Tony isn't super attentive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-11 13:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17448188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromath/pseuds/Andromath
Summary: Peter Parker is a normal kid. He is 15. He goes to school (albeit one of the best science schools in the world). His Mom has been Forbes "Most Powerful Woman in Business" every year since 2009. He has friends and the most he has to worry about is getting good grades.Oh, and his soon-to-be Step-Father.(Or the Iron Step-son AU that nobody asked for)





	I Battle My Jerk Step-Dad

Tony accepts that before Afghanistan, he wasn’t a good person. He was selfish, and if something didn’t involve him, he kinda zoned out. He did care deeply, but he purposefully forced himself to act and be a certain way. His fucked up way of rebellion against the world that produced his own deadbeat dad.

But his all time low was not realizing that Pepper had a son.

When he sold his tower to Stark Industries and moved upstate, he was on a break with Pepper. Getting away was good for both of them. Pepper needed to stay in the City to run the company. Tony needed to get away with all the stress after his disagreement with Cap.

Once they got back together though, that distance became a problem. So he made a conscious effort to go into the City to see her. Unfortunately, that usually meant actually attending all the boring meetings Pepper always wanted him to attend.

It was when he finally got out of one of those meetings when it happened.

He was sitting in Pepper’s waiting room, waiting for her to be free when he sees some random teenager just walk through the desks toward Pepper’s office. He passes Tony, giving him a dirty look, and just walks right into Pepper’s office like its no big deal.

Like Tony, her fiance, doesn’t even get the special privilege of just waltzing in and has to wait for her assistant to let her in.

So of course Tony asked him his secret afterwards, nobody just walks in on Pepper Potts. But the kid, Peter, didn’t like him very much and they may have had a tiny argument.

That Pepper had to break up.

Which is how he learned Pepper had a son. Peter. 15. Goes to a private boarding school in Geneva, which had many CERN scientists as professors.

Not great boyfriending, especially since as she chastised him in her (formerly his) office, he starts noticing things. Like the pictures of her and the kid on the walls, which he hadn’t looked at since at since Pepper started moving in.

Or remembering how almost 16 years ago, he had to deal with the worst assistant of his life because Pepper took a sabbatical. Which only know he realizes was Maternity leave.

Or when Pepper asked him if he knew any good private schools specializing in science and engineering a few years ago. He thought it was for a charity donation.

Or that Pepper had a standing appointment, every day at 6:30, when she would have a private call. Tony knows for a fact she ended a conference call with the President once to make that phone call.

He was only drawn out of his musing when he noticed the room was quiet. Pepper was staring at him her patently ‘Tired of Tony’s Shit’ glare. So had noticed he wasn’t paying attention.

Tony would like it on the record they had a serious adult discussion. Pepper admitted she purposefully didn’t mention Peter in front of Tony. At first, it was because she thought Tony was a terrible influence and wanted to keep her sweet, innocent son away. After becoming Iron Man, she was going to introduce them. She even brought him to the Stark Expo.

Which promptly got blown up by Hammer’s drones.

Understandably, in Tony’s opinion, she didn’t want her son to be around after he almost got shot for wearing an Iron Mask.

After, when they got together and engaged, she planned on telling Tony. That was what Peter and Pepper were talking about earlier. The problem was that Peter despised Tony Stark.

Apparently when someone’s reckless behavior almost kills your mother, several times, you grow a bit of a grudge.

After finding out about what Barnes did to Tony’s mother, the rage he felt, he really can’t blame the kid.

But for better or worse, he is going to marry Pepper. Which means he will be Peter’s step-dad. He promises he will try to bond with the kid, and he does try.

Peter doesn’t make it easy though.

The kid just started his summer vacation, and Pepper arranges for him to stay at the Compound for a bit so they can bond.

The kid is a science nerd, top of his class and Pepper says several Ivy League colleges are already trying to get him to enroll with him. So Tony figures it should be easy to dazzle him with Avengers technology.

It works, and Tony thinks maybe Pepper was exaggerating about Peter’s hatred of Tony.

She wasn’t.

The next day FRIDAY notifies him that he has made the headline of every media tabloid. Someone, and FRIDAY is unable to determine who, hacked into her and entered Tony’s bathroom.

They posted several pictures of Tony’s extensive beauty products on Tony’s twitter account. The tagline was the brand and colour of Tony’s hair dye. The kid started a war.

Tony couldn’t prove it was the kid, he tried though. Even dusted for fingerprints, but the kid covered all his bases. So Tony struck back.

First, he replaced all the kid’s clothes with Iron Man merchandise. Then, before the kid could find something else to wear, dragged him into the City. They were going to a good old fashioned baseball game.

Tony knew that Peter would act like they weren’t together. He planned on it, on Peter being embarrassed and acting like Tony was a stranger.

So by the end of the day, the internet exploded about the “Iron Man Super-fan that was lucky enough to have seats right next to Tony Stark”. The kid was not happy.

Tony had been expecting retaliation, but he never expected what the kid did next. Tony woke up two days later to find FRIDAY out of commission.

Instead, Peter had installed a new AI in her place. A temperamental and agitated AI, called KAREN. She wouldn’t even unlock his door and let him out of his room. She played Taylor Swift over the speakers.

She turned off the hot water mid-shower.

Tony had to crawl through the vents to get out of his room. He needed to get to the AI data-bank to get FRIDAY back online, which normally wasn’t hard.

Except the kid had laid booby traps throughout the halls, locked doors in the way, and made what was normally a 3 minute walk from his room in the Compound turned into a 45 minute trench run from hell.

In the end, when FRIDAY was restored, he thought that was the end of it. He went back to his room to wash off the glitter, slime and a white substance he hoped was flour.

He never suspected the hair dye in his shampoo. It was the oldest and most cliched prank. Which is exactly why Peter distracted him with bigger pranks first.

Tony doesn’t think he ever saw Pepper laugh as much as when she saw him drag Peter to her office, hair and goatee bright pink. He expected Pepper to punish the kid, instead she gave him a raise of his allowance.

So Tony bought Peter’s school, and plastered his name all over it. Peter would be getting his degree from the “Tony Stark School for the Scientifically Gifted…and Peter”.

Unfortunately Stark Industries PR team put a stop to that, apparently it opened them up to bad press to mock the CEO’s underage son. But he did get his name on the school, so Peter would have to live with that.

Tony was also prepared to buy a significant portion of whichever University Peter went to. But that is when things got better.

Or well… got worse and then got better.

Peter and Pepper were out to Lunch, a rooftop cafe in Queens, when a Pepper was kidnapped. A flying weirdo with metal wings, who was angry about a recent Stark Industries decision not to use his construction company for a big project. Turns out, he had been stealing pieces of alien tech and decided to test out a suit he made from it.

Peter could do nothing but stand and watch as the man lifted his mother into the sky, before dropping her.

Until an Iron Man suit showed up. Only… it wasn’t an Iron Man suit. It had a different body shape. Peter watched as it wrapped itself around his mother and she began to fly as well.

Peter watched Pepper Rescue herself. Watched her shoot down the Vulture and come make sure she was okay.

After that, Peter seemed to warm up to Tony, whose had known Pepper would be a target again and made an Iron Man suit for her. They spoke civilly. Tony and Peter starting doing projects together in Tony’s labs. Things were looking up.

And if Peter broke into Tony’s lab, made himself an Iron Man suit and started going out as a vigilante named “Iron Lad”…

Well Tony was proud, even if Pepper grounded Peter for the next 30 years.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel Free to hit me up on Tumblr at https://andromath.tumblr.com/ !
> 
> This was inspired by a gifset I saw once on my "explore" list and I never saw it again.


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